Charles Burney

The Present State of Music in France and Italy (2nd, corrected edition)

London: T. Becket and Co., 1773

Turin

folio. The access to these books is easy,
both before and after dinner, every day,
holidays excepted. I was very politely
treated there, on Signor Baretti's account,
by Signor Grela, the distributer of the
books, who shewed me several of the
most ancient MSS.

Among my musical enquiries at Turin,
David Rizio was not forgotten; who
having been a native of this city, and his
father a musician here, I thought it like-
ly, if I could find any music composed by
either of them, or by their cotempora-
ries, that it would determine the long
disputed question, whether David Rizio
was author of the Scots melodies attri-
buted to him*.

In my journey from Turin to Milan,
I stopped a little while at Vercelli; which
is a large town, said to contain twenty
thousand inhabitants; where I met with